Radio Archive

15

Annika Stranded

Nicola first starred in this radio project in January 2013.

For all information about Series 1, go to this Page.

A 2nd series of this radio show was recorded and was broadcast every Sunday in July 2014. For more information about Series 2, go to this Page.

A 3rd series was recorded and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2016. For more information about Series 3, go to this Page.

A 4th series was recorded and began airing on BBC Radio 4 in August 2018. For more information about Series 4, go to this Page.

A 5th series was recorded and began airing on BBC Radio 4 in June 2019. For more information about Series 5, go to this Page.

A 6th series was recorded and began airing on BBC Radio 4 in May 2020. For more information about Series 6, go to this Page.

This is such a brilliant, funny series and Nicola does a superb job of bringing Annika to life. We wish they would turn this radio series into a television series 😀

[December 2020 Ed’s Note : We are happy to announce that Annika has indeed been turned into a TV show, which is covered HERE.]

Incidentally, Nicola is not related to the writer of this show, Nick Walker.

You can listen to this programme, wherever you are in the world, via the BBC Radio iPlayer, which does not have any geographic restrictions. The programme will remain available on the BBC Radio iPlayer for 30 days after the original broadcast date, so if you are unable to tune in at the designated time, you can still catch up on the iPlayer.

Follow us on Twitter (@BonkerbutBrill or @NicolaWalkerFan) for up to date information about when this programme will be aired or repeated on BBC Radio 4.

Theme song

In response to the many enquiries we received from fans of the show about the theme song for this series, we asked and received the answer from Karen Rose of Sweet Talk Productions, the producer of Annika Stranded :

The artist(s) are Klara and Johanna Soderberg (aka First Aid Kit) and the song title is ‘To A Poet

 
 

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Fugue State

Fugue State

A new SweetTalk Productions radio project starring Nicola. The show was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 29 October 2015.

In the heart of the English countryside in a specialist residential hospital. A man, a government agent, is in a fugue state – a psychological shutdown – the result of something seemingly threatening that has taken place in a remote village.

Needing to act before the situation escalates and believing the patient can still hear, Doctor Fallon uses sound recordings to recreate events leading up to the point of shutdown, to prompt the patient’s brain into remembering what has happened.

Julian Simpson’s original drama was inspired by a series of talks and workshops at the Wellcome Trust, based around the latest thinking on how the human brain processes inputs – how it builds a model of the world, which we call reality, based on sensory information and our prediction of what we are expecting to see, hear or feel.

How to listen to the show

Non-UK fans can tune into BBC Radio 4 via the BBC Radio iPlayer which does not have any geographic restrictions. After the show has been aired, it should remain available on the BBC Radio iPlayer for 30 days thereafter.

Six Degrees

Phoebe Fox was Nicola’s co-stars in A View from the Bridge.

Tim McInnerny was Nicola’s co-star in Spooks. He played Oliver Mace in Series 3, 4 and 5.

Stephen Mackintosh was Nicola’s co-star in Inside Men.

Julian Simpson directed Nicola in a number of episodes in Spooks Series 4 and New Tricks. He also directed Nicola in a number of radio plays, Fragments/Pleasant Green, The Listener, Bad Memories and Kokomo.

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November Dead List

November-Dead-List

What’s the show about

From the BBC Radio 4 website, we have this synopsis of this new radio show :

Nicola Walker stars as a police detective who investigates a murder in London’s Catholic community in this new, gritty crime drama by Nick Perry.

Each Roman Catholic parish compiles a Book of the Dead from the lists of departed loved ones submitted by parishioners. Printed on the front of the envelopes are three words: November Dead List. A young priest opens one such envelope and discovers not a list of the dead, but a list of people he knows to be alive, and members of his congregation. At first he thinks it’s someone’s idea of a joke. Then the people named start turning up dead.

DI Flood – Nicola Walker
Father Manu -Paul Ready
John – Steve Toussaint
Father Pat – Dermot Crowley
Simon – Arthur Hughes
Terrence – John Norton
Gerry – Stephen Hogan
Kevin – Sean Murray
Eileen – Carolyn Pickles
Journalist – Carys Eleri
Producer – Sasha Yevtushenko
Writer – Nick Perry

The theme song is Roads by Portishead.

When will it be broadcast?

The show will broadcast over a five day period, with a 15 minute segment on each day, from Monday 20 January 2014 to Friday 24 January 2014, at 10:45 to 11:00 am GMT and repeated the same evening at 19:45 pm GMT.

The show is also available as an Omnibus Edition, i.e. all five episodes aired together, aired on BBC Radio 4 Extra on Saturday, 25 January 2014 at 12 noon.

After each broadcast, the show will be available on the BBC Radio iPlayer for 7 days. There is no geographic restrictions for the BBC Radio iPlayer, so you can tune in from anywhere in the world.

Reviews

There Ought to be Clowns

It’s no secret that I like me some Nicola Walker and so seeing her take the lead in Nick Perry’s radio drama November Dead List was definitely a thrill. It was the 15 minute drama of the week, five short episodes split across five days which I always find a little annoying so the omnibus edition was infinitely more preferable. A police procedural in which Walker plays a DI called in to investigate a murder which was seemingly predicted on a dead list, normally a list of deceased parishioners in a Catholic congregation but in this case, full of people who are still alive.

Soundtracked by the moody tones of Portishead’s Roads, it proved a rather effective police procedural as the race against time seems compromised by someone close to the case. From Kent wetlands to an Irish seminary and back again, Walker’s DI Flood is an utterly determined cop, at the expense of a personal life, and so the unexpected chemistry with Paul Ready’s Father Manu – who found the list – is a surprise to all but yet really well done in creating a palpable relationship in which one really invests. Lots of fun.

Update : 25 January 2014

Great news! The entire 67 minutes of this programme is now available for download and keep as an iTunes Podcast*!!! As far as we know, this is the first time one of Nicola’s radio shows is made available to fans in this manner. Lets hope the BBC will do the same in future and/or release some of her older stuff as downloadable iTunes Podcasts 😀

Thank you, RuthF, for the heads up about the programme. Thank you, Judith, for the heads up about the iTunes Podcast download! 😀

*Ed’s Note : the BBC has removed this programme from its iTunes Podcasts lists one week after the show was broadcast. 🙁

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Christmas Diaries

Christmas-Diaries

Following the success of the Easter Diaries on BBC Radio 4 Extra earlier this year, producer Paul Arnold and writer Nick Warburton have teamed up again to produce the Christmas Diaries. This programme will be a series of 5 short episodes of about 5 minutes each, airing from Friday, 21 December 2012 until Thursday, 27 December 2012 (there will not be any broadcasts on Saturday and Sunday during this period), at just before 11 am and 9 pm GMT each day on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

From producer Paul Arnold’s BBC Radio 4 Blog

Like the earlier project, the idea was to re-tell the familiar story from the perspective of those involved, either well-known characters such as Joseph and Mary, or those from Nick’s imagination – a traveller on the Nazareth road, or one of Herod’s lawyers. And we wanted once more to do that in real time, hearing day by day how it might have felt for them, without our perspective coloured by the centuries in between.

Nicola will voice the part of the Traveller, who meets Joseph and reflects on the past. Her episode will air on BBC Radio 4 on Christmas Eve, Monday, 24 December 2012.

If you cannot tune in at the appropriate time, you can always catch up on the BBC Radio iPlayer which does not have any geographic restrictions – you can listen to BBC radio programmes from anywhere in the world. (Look for this programme under “C” for the “Christmas Diaries”.)

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Big Town All Stars (rpt)

 

BBC Radion 4 Extra will be repeating this wonderful radio programme again, on Friday, 27 July 2012 at 23:00 GMT. If you cannot tune in at the time, or you don’t live in the UK, you can catch this programme on the BBC Radio iPlayer for seven days after its first broadcast, i.e from shortly after midnight on Saturday, 28 July 2012 until about 23:00 GMT on Friday, 3 August 2012.

Don’t like radio shows? Never heard one before? Don’t think you can multi-task by listening to a radio show and doing something else at the same time? Well, tune into this one and I’m sure Nicola’s performance will astonish you and change your mind completely about this genre!If you’ve heard this programme before, then its time for your annual fix of Nicola singing 😀

Here is what we said on 3 July 2011 when this programme was repeated on BBC Radion 4 Extra :

BBC Radio 4 Extra (formerly known as BBC Radio 7) will repeat the Big Town All Stars as from Friday, 8 July 2011, at 23:30 GMT. We have an episode guide, cast list and more details to this programme HERE . One episode will be repeated in each week.

This is easily one of the best radio shows which Nicola has done. The writing is sharp and full of zippy one liners. As the show revolves around an acappella group, cast members (including Nicola) get to sing snippets of their repertoire throughout the show. Its “Glee” for grown-ups, except that the show was years ahead of its time and has shown no signs of aging. And yes, Nicola has a brilliant singing voice, though she told us that she did have difficulties with the four part harmonies on one or two songs. It would be brilliant if the powers that be could turn this into a TV show, since “Glee” has now paved the way for TV singing shows.

For now, you can listen to this radio show via the internet, no matter which part of the world you live in. Just log on to the BBC Radio 4 Extra website HERE at the appropriate time. If you are unable to catch the show on its first broadcast because of time zone differences or other reasons, you will be pleased to know that each episode will remain available on the BBC Radio iPlayer for seven days after its first broadcast.

On 1 July 2011, we logged a tweet about this show being repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra. We were really chuffed that our tweet was retweeted by the radio station itself a few minutes afterwards! However, we have not been able to confirm with the radio station whether or not they will be including episode 3 of Series 2 in this re-broadcast. For copyright or other reasons, that particular episode was not included each time the show was rebroadcast in 2009 and 2010. For those of us who have been lucky enough to have heard this missing episode, we would say that there is no great loss if it is not rebroadcast since (a) it is possibly the weakest episode in the entire two Series and (b) Nicola has only a few lines in this episode.

Don’t miss this broadcast. It is mandatory listening for any card carrying NOG (that would be “Nicola Obsessed Girls/Guys”)!

Update : 10 November 2012

BBC Radio 4 Extra has just started repeating Series 2 of this how. Back in July 2012, it repeated only Series 1. Tune in, wherever you are!

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The Last Breath

Nicola is back on the radio on Friday, 6 July 2012 in BBC Radio 4’s Afternoon Drama, The Last Breath. The following information is taken from BBC Radio 4’s website.

The drama is set in 2018. Assisted suicide has been legalised in the UK.

Ben Fearnside is an abstract expressionist painter. He has had some success with London galleries but his work has now fallen out of fashion. Without an audience his life-work is unwitnessed and ‘uncreated’. He decides to make one final piece of art: he will capture a dying breath in a jar and exhibit it.

Ben invites freelance radio producer Anita Sullivan to profile him and document the process of capturing The Last Breath. But as the date for breath capture approaches, the identity of the donor remains a mystery.

‘The Last Breath’ is a high-concept piece of drama about a high-concept piece of art. It plays with narrative form by blending documentary and drama, using real people and real names with a fictional story. The play asks some big questions: what is art, what should be sacrificed in the name of art… and what is the price of a soul?

The Last Breath was created by Ben Fearnside with Anita Sullivan

Nicky is played by Nicola Walker


The interviewees are : 
Derek and Mo Fearnside, Ben Fletcher, Professor Emma Jones, Anthony Chopper White, Linda Keenan and Dr Mark Gretason.


The Static State artists are : 
Kenny Watson, Alex Allan, Joseph Watts and Robert Perry.

Music was written and performed by Nick Tettersell.

Producer: Karen Rose 
A Sweet Talk Production for BBC Radio 4.

click to see a larger image of the tweets

There was a conversation on Twitter on 11 June 2012 where QVoice mentioned that they had done a recent recording which involved Nicola. It is possible that that recording was for this programme.

The programme will go on air at 2:15 pm on Friday, 6 July 2012 and run for 45 minutes. If you cannot tune in at that time, the programme will remain available on the BBC’s Radio iPlayer for 7 days thereafter, i.e. until 13.6.2012. There is no geographical restrictions on listening to the BBC Radio iPlayer so no matter where in the world you live in, you should be able to catch this programme. You do not need any special software in order to use the BBC Radio iPlayer.

Update : 12 April 2015

From the Anita Sullivan website

The drama was all improvised. There was no script, only a storyline. All the contributors (apart from Nicola Walker) were friends or professional associates of the artist, non-actors.

Repeats

This show will be repeated on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday, 14 April 2015. You can listen in from anywhere in the world for 30 days after the repeat has been aired. Thank you, Sweet Talk Productions, for the heads-up.

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The Time Being: Jules rpt

BBC Radio 4 will be repeating its broadcast of “The Time Being” series and first up is Nicola’s episode, Jules. You can read more about this programme HERE. The repeat will go out at 00.30 GMT on Sunday, 7 August 2011 and thereafter available on the BBC Radio iPlayer for seven days. There is no geographic restriction on the BBC Radio iPlayer so non-UK fans can also listen to this programme.

The programme itself is a little less than 15 minutes, and once again, Nicola delivers some fantastic voice acting.

Not to be missed.

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Voice of 7th Dimension

Nicola is the voice of BBC Radio 4 Extra’s 7th Dimension this week. This means that she announces the name of the show at the beginning and at the end of the show. Have a listen :

7th Dimension VoiceOver

7th Dimension is the BBC’s regular radio slot for science fiction, fantasy and horror. It is broadcast on the digital radio station BBC Radio 4 Extra at 6 pm or 6:30 pm (depending on the day of the week) GMT, seven days a week and then repeated each day at around midnight. The host of the show is Nick Briggs. Most of the programs are full cast dramatizations and the remainder are book readings. The show is also available on the BBC Radio iPlayer , but its listed under the individual story names and not under “7th Dimension”. So if you wish to listen to an episode, you should look up the name of the story first in the Schedule page of BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Six degrees :

Nick Briggs is the host of this show. Nick is also executive producer and the writer of Robophobia.

Toby Hadoke (@TobyHadoke) alerted us to this gig via twitter. (Thank you, Toby 😀 ) Toby plays Farel on Robophobia . Toby will be on 7th Dimenson every night for the next two weeks. You can find out more about this amazing actor/writer/comedian/Dr Who fan by visiting his website.

Please also visit our Guide to Nicola’s other audio work for samples of some of her voice over work, HERE.